The Tomasas nuns mentioned in the speech are the nuns of the Convent of Santo Tomás de Villanueva, convent of the Tomasas (they made a cake called ‘torta real de las Tomasas’).
It is a convent of Augustinian Recollect nuns erected in 1636. It is in the Albaicín and is one of the many convents with its church that are scattered throughout the city. Granada has eighty bell towers, Federico says at the beginning of his speech. One of the sounds of this city would indeed be the bells, precisely because of the number of convents and churches that there are, the result and symbol of the Christian repopulation after its takeover in 1492.
The author mentions, for example, the bells of San Juan de Dios (St. John of God), a church located on the street of the same name with the homonymous hospital, dedicated to one of the saints (who lived from 1495 to 1550) who has left the most evidence of his existence in Granada, founder of the order of the Hospitaller Brothers of Juan de Dios. The church has two beautiful towers with green and white tiles and is a baroque jewel. “From May to June, Granada is an incessant bell tower. Students can’t study. In Plaza de Bibarambla the bells of the Cathedral, underwater bells with seaweed and clouds, do not let the peasants speak. The bells of the San Juan de Dios church fill the air with a baroque altarpiece of wailing and bronze clanging […]”.